Photo spam session 1

Well I got reminded last night that I don't think I ever posted on here the results from my dressage competition, I didn't manage to place in either of the tests but the good news is that in both of them I was one place of placing. I got 7th in both and even managed to get a '9' score on my first test. My riding was better in the walk trot test because I had a bit of a melt down in the second test because instead of focusing on what I was doing I was stressing about who was judging me however I didn't come last on either of them so I was quite happy. Gatsby was a star that day, I still need to put the videos on youtube but as soon as I have put them up I will post them here and you can let me know what you guys think. 

These are just a couple of photographs that were taken at the show, these are my two favourites and the one at the top is even my laptop screensaver, after having done one show I have realised that I would love to do another one. But first I want to lose some more weight. 

Now on to some more riding photographs, I haven't really posted much recently with everything that has been going on and to be honest I've annoyed myself by getting this far behind again, so while this post is going to be full of photographs I am going to get back to posting more regularly. 

The first lot of photographs are from my ride two weeks ago, they were taken by my mum and Jack and this is where we decided that I can ride better without stirrups. At the minute our theory is that when I ride with stirrups to try and support my hip I brace my leg against the stirrups which means that I end up pushing my position ever so slightly out of place. So we took my stirrups away to see what happened and we did work in the walk, trot and even small bits of canter, all though I can't say that i am the worlds biggest fan of the downwards transitions. The photographs should show up the slight differences in my position and while they are not overly obvious they do make a big difference. 

This photo doesn't show my position very well but I think that Gatsby looks pretty cool and shiny so I thought that I would include it anyway.

This is just to show my position with my stirrups as you'll see it's not the worlds best and i'm not very happy with it, my arms and legs are wrong, although my leg doesn't look to bad here but you can see the tension through my left side. 

Here Fiona was showing me the feel that I need to have down the reins with Gatsby as sometimes I am not quite firmer enough but it's something that we will slowly improve on. 

Again this was just to show you guys what happens when I have my stirrups. 

Because my boy took a wicked photograph of Gatsby and I really love it so I thought that all you lot needed to see it too. 

Riding without stirrups, the main thing I need to work on when doing this is keeping my toes up. however I felt that this photo and the photo below show how my hips aren't quite straight as you'll see that my left leg appears slightly tighter and shorter than my right. 

This is when we started riding Properly see Gatsby you can work in an outline you just didn't know it!

Again much easier to sit the trot when I had actually put Gatsby together and got him working in an outline.

I'm not quite sure what was going on here other than we were doing some canter work Gatsby seems to have a massive stride when you look at this but sitting it it doesn't feel that big. 

The part that I am not very good at (I'm 99% sure that this is what this is anyway) coming down from canter back to sitting trot with no stirrups. 

Well I think that i have spammed you guys with photographs enough for one day, or at least enough for one past I might decide to post again later but for now I'll leave you with one lessons with off photographs, feel free to let me know what you think about my position or just any comments you have you know I love hearing from you guys! So until later (when you'll have more photographs).

AmberRose A Girl With A Dream